» What to watch: Frontier graduated 13 seniors from last year’s squad, so it will be fielding a rather young team. The big junior class will look to lead the way for the Wolverines.

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This week has marked the first official practices for many fall sports teams in Weld County.

But, many of them engaged in a heavy workload during the summer to try and get a head start.

No one knows this better than the Frontier Academy cross country team.

For the Wolverines, it’s unofficially Week 11 of the 2014 season.

Sophomore Jennifer Bowles said most of the runners trained five days a week as a team and one day on their own throughout the summer.

“That makes the whole season. Without summer training, we would not be this far,” Bowles said. “… We’ve been working really hard and everyone is super excited for the season. We kinda have a younger team, but I really think that we have a lot of upcoming talent.”

Frontier coach Brett Shanklin said he feels this is a different team from the defending Class 3A state champion boys and fourth-place girls.

“We lost 13 seniors and this year we’ve got a pretty heavy sophomore and junior class, but I really like the team dynamics more than teams in the previous years,” Shanklin said. “Everybody just has really gelled together. Being around successful teams breeds itself, so success breeds success.

“With that being the case, they’ve just been able to come in and commit themselves, and they know what’s expected and they know what kind of work that they need to do each day,” he added.

The Wolverines open their season at 3 p.m. Thursday at the Cheyenne Mountain Stampede in Colorado Springs.

With so much training already, junior Josiah Davis said Frontier is feeling really confident heading into its first meet but is still getting used to a couple things.

“We’re getting used to running from 7 in the morning and now we’re running in the afternoon, so it’s really hot,” Davis said. “So, we’re getting used to that. And, we’ve had a couple new kids that we’re just trying to bring into the team.”

Junior Dhalton Akey said he feels like the Wolverines have a strong future with the new runners, which have made for a big team this year.

“Last year, we lost our seniors and it was kind of this moment of ‘what’s next?’ ” Akey said. “And, as we’ve gotten more people to go along with the summer (training) and now in the season, it builds up confidence within the teammates. Just today, it’s overwhelming how (well) we work together.”

Frontier will be missing key runners from last season, including Chris Baker (fifth at state) and Makayla Santos (second at state), who junior Emily Root said were good examples for runners on and off the track.

“I’ve had a lot of people ahead of me who’ve just been great examples for me and great people to look up to, so I’m excited for the opportunity to be the same for the younger girls, too,” Root said.

Shanklin said one thing that is different this year is Frontier went away from naming captains and went more with everyone holding a leadership role.

“The whole premise is we think anybody on the team can be a leader — it doesn’t matter if you’re a freshman or a senior,” he said. “We want (them) all to kinda show (their) leadership skills and so that was one thing that we did at camp is we investigated our core values. … A bunch of kids have stepped up on any given day, so if somebody’s having a bad day, they’re there to pull ‘em along.”

Bowles said the juniors have been doing a good job pushing the other runners considering there are only three seniors on the team this season.

“I do feel that we are definitely in the lead to finish like we did last year,” she added. “Like I said, we just have a lot of talent on the team this year, and I think that with the right training, everyone’s gonna be phenomenal.”

Shanklin said the Wolverines don’t really buy too much into being defending state champions, but their focus is still on two meets: regionals and state.

“Everything else along the way is just part of the process, and we’re just there to perfect the process daily,” Shanklin said.